


acting out

by coolman6787



Category: Lazer Team (2015)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Familial bonding, Friendship, Gen, Herman is a better uncle, Herman would make a bad dad, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Uncle Herman, Underage Drinking, but he's okay when he tries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 07:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12383628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolman6787/pseuds/coolman6787
Summary: After Lazer Team defeats the Worg, the planet is saved and everybody gets a happy ending. Everyone except Mindy, of course, who ends up finding comfort in the strangest of people.





	acting out

Mindy walks home from school using a discreet route to avoid crazed Lazer Team fans and reporters. It had been a few months since her dad, Zach, and the others had defeated the Worg champion, which resulted in Milford becoming a tourist spot now known famously as the hometown of ‘the Champions of Earth’.

Lazer Team had practically become a franchise. They had action figures, posters, t-shirts, mugs, and now a movie on the way.

Mindy had felt proud of her Dad, but wasn’t speaking to him as of late. She even had to stop skyping Zach, as her Dad would usually be near. 

But with this secretive route back home, she was free from the pestering of reporters and classmates asking ‘how cool it was’ to ‘have a superhero for a Dad’.

Mindy hums contently in the rare peace, liking how it feels and sounds when the leaves crunch under her boots as she walks.

But as she stews in the comfort of this silence it is almost immediately broken when she feels a harsh wind whip at her from behind, flinging her hair forward and onto her face. Mindy parts her hair and spits out a mouthful of her golden locks. Turning around, she sees the last person she’d ever expected to see.

“Sup girl,” Herman greets with a swig of beer. Mindy notices a six-pack of beer slung around his hand.

Besides when he saved her from the possessed soldier, they barely interacted. With Woody they at least used to exchange friendly small talk on occasion as he handed her water during football games. But she had zero history with Herman.

“Uh hi?” Mindy replies awkwardly. She notices he's in his training attire, the one she was familiar with Zach wearing. A grey DETIA shirt, camouflage pants, and alien boots instead of the army boots the others wore.

“What's up?” he asks.

“Just going home,” Mindy answers. She didn’t really know what to say. What do you say to the guy who once hated your dad but reconciled with him after they saved the planet?

“I heard you haven’t been talkin’ to your dad lately,” Herman remarks. And then it all makes sense.

Mindy rolls her eyes and marches forward at a quick pace. Herman catches up to her, speedwalking beside her.

“Woah, hold up girl! I may have superspeed but no one can run with a stomach full of beer!” Herman exclaims.

“My dad sent you here didn’t he?” Mindy asks accusingly before abruptly stopping.

Herman raises both his hands in a sign of innocence. “Woah, woah your dad did _not_ send me here. I was just out for a beer run cause they weren’t letting us out of the base cause of training. But I never give up on alcohol, so I asked about beer everyday enough that they gave in and let me go out to get some,” he clarifies.

“Yeah and dad told you to ask me what’s wrong on the way, right?” Mindy bites back.

“No! I only knew you weren’t calling him cause that’s all he’s been bitching about lately. While brushing our teeth it's 'Mindy's not calling me'. While doing pushups for training it's 'Mindy's not calling me'. After training, when we're getting ready to hit the sack it's 'Mindy's not calling me'. It’s fucking annoying,” Herman elaborates. “But I just saw you and decided to check up on you."

She wants to think he’s lying but the casual tone of his voice tells her that he doesn’t _need_ to be here. So either he’s telling the truth and he _is_ just stopping by, or her Dad _did_ send him here to check up on her and Herman just doesn’t care enough whether he actually succeeds.

“Then why would you care about checking up on me?” Mindy scoffs.

She doesn’t know why cares enough to ask. Maybe it’s because it was the first time anyone actually bothered to ask her how she was doing. Even her best friend, Jules, succumbed to starstruck adoration, asking her how it felt to know the Champions of Earth. No one asked how it felt to almost be shot at multiple times, or have an alien gun jammed in your face or watch as the world might end and it’d be your Dad’s fault if it did.

Herman snickers and it just about makes Mindy more embarrassed she asked until he speaks up again.

“You do know your mom was pregnant with you when I was still friends with your Dad back in high school, right?” Herman asks in that teasing, singsongy way he talks.

Mindy’s mind recalls being a kid and camping out at her mom's cabin. Mindy would flip through the albums lying around and see a photo of her mom and dad back in high school. Her mom looked almost like how Mindy looks now, save for the bulge in her stomach where she was pregnant.

But there was a third person in that photo and it only now clicks that that was Herman.

Mindy had seen that photo countless times as a child and only now did it make sense. But she never could have guessed that the Herman next to her was the guy in the photo. The guy in the photo had a springy hair, an athletic build, and a youthful smile while the guy next to her was balding, overweight, and tinged with cynicism.

“Oh yeah you were…,” Mindy says to herself more than anybody.

“Yeah! In fact, I might’ve been your godfather if it weren’t for that whole…,” Herman says, trailing off. “... thing,” Herman finishes with finger quotations.

Mindy cringes a bit hearing him briefly mention his history with her Dad, not only because it had caused him a lot of grief, but also because it wasn’t long after that had her parents separated.

“Yeah maybe…,” Mindy responds resignedly.

Herman notices her shift in mood and he noticeably ties to pick it back up when he says, “But hey, now that things are cool between me and your dad, I can still be your uncle!”

“My uncle?” Mindy repeats.

“Yeah, your uncle! Uncle Herman! Sounds good doesn’t it? Rolls right off the tongue!” Herman jokes. “Say it!”

“I’m not saying that,” Mindy attempts to say sternly, only for her lips to curl into a smile in the process.

“Come on!”

“No!”

“Uncle-”

“Oh my god.”

“-Herman!”

“Nooooooooo!” Mindy yells with stifling laughs, her hands covering her ear-to-ear grin.

“Come on, you know you wanna say it!” Herman eggs on, elbowing her lightly.

“Noooo,” Mindy groans into her hands.

“Say iiit!” Herman insists, clapping to encourage her.

Mindy can't restrain a smile and she hesitates for a moment before opening her mouth to speak.

Before she can say anything however, she is interrupted by the abrupt honks of an approaching pickup truck. As it gets closer she observes that the back is filled with jocks from the high school and that seated on the passenger seat was Jules.

“Jules?” Mindy asks.

“Hey!” Jules yells, the truck now across from Mindy but still a good distance away.

“What’s up?”

“There’s a party at my house later tonight, you should come!” The driving jock answers.

“Yeah there’ll be a keg and everything!” Jules affirms.

Mindy hesitates but concedes and says, “Uh, sure, maybe I’ll stop by.”

“Hey-,” one of the jocks on the back starts. “Who’s thi- oh shit! It’s you!” he yells pointing behind Mindy.

Mindy tilts her head in confusion until she remembers who’s with her which brings her to roll her eyes and sigh.

“You’re Herman! You’re one of the Lazer Team guys, the one with the boots and shit!” the jock exclaims, which hypes up the other jocks as well as they gasp and speak among themselves in shock and awe.

Herman, a sponge for praise and attention, can’t help himself when he not-so-humbly shrugs, nods, and says, “Well… I am pretty amazing.”

“Dude, you should totally come to the party!” the jock offers.

“Look I'm flattered, but I don’t know about tha-, you said there was a keg?” Herman probes, curious about the aforementioned alcohol.

“A keg?” Mindy interjects. “But you have a six-pack of beer with you right now.”

“Well, yeah but I’ve finished four beers since we started talking,” Herman points out. And Mindy looks down to see four empty cans of beer scattered at his feet, something that somehow managed to go unnoticed by her.

“There’s totally a keg, bro!” The jock assures. “Unless you’re, you know. Working for the government and just trying to expose us for underage drinking.”

“I mean, I do work for the government but-,” Herman says before pausing to chug down the rest of his fifth beer. He crushes the beer can, dropping it onto the floor. He then grabs the sixth beer, a brief sizzle spurring as he uncaps it.

“-what the government doesn’t know won’t hurt ‘em!”

* * *

“I can’t believe you actually came,” Mindy says in equal parts disbelief and frustration.

It’s evening now, and Mindy rode with Jules and the others to the party while Herman followed closely behind them thanks to the boots. Mindy and Herman are both standing in front of a huge house, the home of the party. 

“They said there was a keg!” Herman argues, as if that’s a legitimate argument.

“You’re working for the government in a party full of underage teens drinking beer!” Mindy challenges, desperate not to have her dad or any part of Lazer Team following her to a party for once.

“Like I said-,” Herman starts as he walks backwards into the front door. “-what the government doesn’t know won't hurt ‘em.”

Mindy groans and runs her hand through her hair. She follows Herman into the house begrudgingly, in desperate need for a drink.

Mindy walks through the crowd, bumping shoulders with dozens of people until finally reaching the kitchen where the keg was. Mindy gets there in time to see Herman filling a red solo cup with beer.

When Herman spots her he offers it to her, which elicits suspicion from Mindy. But she grabs it anyway, albeit cautiously.

Herman starts to fill a cup for himself while Mindy just stares at hers, a part of her afraid that this is all some sort of test.

“Relax, it won’t bite you,” Herman comments. “You have had alcohol before right?”

Mindy starts to draw the edge of the cup closer to her mouth but decides to ask Herman one thing before choosing to drink.

“You won’t tell Dad?”

Herman’s finished filling his cup when she asks, and he lifts his cup close to hers in a gesture offering to clink their cups.  

"As long as you don’t.”

Any doubts Mindy had is overpowered by her desire to just _drink_. So she sucks it up with one deep breath and she taps her cup with his, downing her cup in one confident swoop. 

She and Herman both slam their cups down at the same time, having finished chugging at the same time. They both wipe their mouths in sync, a cheer erupting around them as they do. Mindy notices a crowd has apparently formed around them, probably around the time Herman started filling his cup.

Mindy simply holds her cup out to Herman, silently asking him for a refill.

Herman raises an eyebrow, impressed and proud in a twisted way. He refills her cup, but she waits until he fills his to take another drink.

They both tap their cups together once again, and chug it down. Another cheer, doubly louder than last time, erupts from the crowd as the two slam their cups down.

They continue to do this for a while until Mindy calls it quits when she feels the room spin. 

Afterwards, Herman, eager to please, resorts to performing party tricks with the boots to entertain the party-goers. He does laps around the backyard pool while the surrounding teens cheer him on and snapchat his tricks. Someone manages to find a couple of hula hoops and they hold them up for him to jump through. Considering the extent of his training, this was a piece of cake for Herman. It sure beat running several miles around a track while jumping through hurdles every few feet.

Meanwhile, Mindy takes to talking to Jules for a while. Jules just points to random guys in the party and ranks them from one to ten, then asks Mindy what her ranking is. Mindy, in developing a headache and already having a boyfriend, throws a random number at her for each one with little consideration. It’s one-sided and not all that entertaining but Mindy’s just glad Jules is talking to her like they used to, instead of rambling about Lazer Team.

Eventually the headaches evolve into migraines though, so Mindy excuses herself to find a more quiet area to rest for a bit.

The living room was an obvious no-go, as that was where most people went to converse or make out. The kitchen was a bust, as that was where the alcohol was and thus was where people from the living room came to refill their cups. She’d try to go upstairs but it was a hassle, as there were a group of stoners smoking and hanging out on the middle of the staircase. So she instead decides to migrate to the backyard.

Mindy passes Herman who's kicking pebbles at cups and beer cans from a distance, in the same way some people practice shooting. A crowd surrounded him, impressed by anything he did or say. Mindy feels too exhausted to waste energy rolling her eyes at him, so she just walks past them without trouble.

Mindy sits down on the couch inside the backyard patio. She rests her head on one hand and massages her forehead. She liked the daze that let her forget about her problems, but the painful throbbing that it came with almost made it not worth it.

Mindy thinks about lying down on the width of the couch, before feeling a pressure press down on the cushion beside her.

Mindy stops massaging her head to look at the new company. It was the host, the jock from earlier that was driving the truck. Mindy struggled to remember his name, not just because she was drunk, but because even as a cheerleader Mindy rarely paid attention to anything about the game besides the score. 

“Oh hey you’re…,” Mindy starts in a slurred voice. She snaps her fingers while trying to remember his name to finish the sentence but nothing comes up.

The jock chuckles and says something, presumably his name. Mindy’s too focused on her pounding migraine to care or listen, but she responds anyways.

“Oh right!” Mindy says as if she heard or remembered his name.

“Enjoying the party so far?” the jock asks.

“Well I don’t know about me but _he_ seems to be having a blast,” Mindy says pointing to Herman, who was bouncing a soccer ball with remarkable speed.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “He is pretty popular around here.” And either Mindy is really out of it or he was getting a bit closer as he talked. And whether he did or not, Mindy just knew she could smell the alcohol from his breath and it felt like bringing bleach to your nose. It stung.

“More like he’s popular _everywhere_ ,” Mindy replies sardonically. She tries to edge away from him but she finds it difficult when she finds herself pressed against the armrest.

“What? Jealous of all the attention he’s getting?” the jock asks with a disconcertingly teasing tone. And now Mindy feels trapped because she’s in-between him and the armrest. It gets worse when she feels his arm snake around her shoulder, as if to keep her in place.

“Um, no, not exactly,” Mindy answers without paying much attention, simply just trying to leave at this point. But his hand has a firm grip on her shoulder, and any strength she had was sapped away by those damn red cups. She tries to retort something but it comes out an effortless groan in the haze of her drunkenness. The jock places a dangerous hand on her knee and she flinches under its bitter coldness. Because to her it doesn’t just feel cold it feels like _everything_ and it’s _awful._

This reminded her all too painfully of the fight at the high school. How helpless she felt as the possessed soldier grabbed hold of her and pointed an alien gun an inch away from her face. And all just to use her as a bargaining chip to get the suit. Mindy feels her breath hitch, remembering how scared and trapped she felt until-

Suddenly Mindy feels a familiar wind wash over her and sees the jock disappear from her line of sight. She doesn't quite get what happened but she just knows she feels safe again. She deflates like a balloon, air seeming to flow through her lungs again.

Mindy rubs her eyes for a few seconds to let her vision adjust and, when it does, she sees Herman pinning the jock against the concrete fence with his boot. The jock looks to be impressed onto the wall, which Mindy guesses just shows how hard Herman pushed him.

The jock looks up at Herman, but not before coughing up a bit of blood that dots the corner of his mouth.

“She’s taken,” Herman seethes through gritted teeth before removing his foot from the jock’s chest, leaving him to collapse on the grass.

Herman goes over to Mindy and offers to carry her bridal style which Mindy happily takes advantage of. Herman walks back inside the house and moves to the front door which was left a bit open, letting him edge it fully open with his foot. This whole time the party had become silent, everyone’s eyes following Herman as he walked past them carrying Mindy.

Before leaving, Herman turns around and yells, “Alright, party’s over folks! Y’all can go home now!” He turns to leave but turns around one more time and adds, “Also make sure the asshole outback with a bootprint on his chest gets arrested.”

* * *

It’s night out when he steps outside. Herman hesitates to use his super-speed to get to Mindy’s house, as she already has a headache and there’s no doubt running would make it worse. But Herman decides she’d wake up feeling like shit anyways and it’d be best for the both of them if Mindy got home sooner rather than later.

So he dashes towards her house and ends up at her doorstep in less than a minute which, predictably, ends with Mindy groaning in pain. Herman can’t seem to find a way into her house, so he lightly stirs her awake to ask if anyone’s home.

“No, Mom’s working a late shift at the hospital,” Mindy mutters. “Check the rock next to the potted plant, there’s a key underneath.”

Herman looks around and spots a potted plant. He picks up the rock next to it, which proves difficult while holding Mindy, and sure enough there’s a key on the back when he flips it over.

“White folks sure are creative,” Herman remarks sarcastically. He takes the key and twists it into the doorknob, managing to get in. Herman drops the key carelessly onto the living room table and kicks the door closed behind him. 

After spending some time navigating the house, he finally finds Mindy's room. And when he enters Herman notices how it’s not too dissimilar to how Mindy's mom decorated the cabin, which gets a chuckle from Herman before he places Mindy on the bed. When he makes a move for the door however, he finds that Mindy has not yet let go of his arm.

“You good?” Herman asks.

Mindy shakes her head and sits up with a pained effort, and pats the spot next to her in invitation. Herman shrugs and sits down next to Mindy and, feeling terrible for how he let things turn out, doesn't resist when she leans her head on his shoulder and wraps her arms around his.

“Look, I’ve had a hangover before. And I’m not gonna lie, you’ll feel like shit for a pretty long time. But just get some rest and when you wake up and feel even worse in the morning, just make some pancakes and chew through the day. That’s what makes me feel better anyway,” Herman advises.

“I don’t just feel like shit because of the beer,” Mindy confesses into his shoulder.

“Well then what's buggin' you?”

Mindy takes a deep breath, then begins to speak.

“Okay, so my Mom was working the night shift in the hospital when you guys were in the stadium," Mindy begins. "And she said that everyone at the hospital was watching the fight. And that when she was watching Dad leave the stadium and enter the crowd she felt so _happy_ , that he-he finally _became something._ I mean, she didn't even care when the army called her and told her about the cabin," she said, referring to the cabin Herman recalls was destroyed via Worg parasite.  

"So she told me that she was gonna call him to try and talk things out but Dad wasn't answering her calls. And then I remembered that they let you guys use your phones at the base, so it's not like he wasn't getting them. So I tried to call him to see what was up," Mindy explains, her voice breaking a little more as she talked. "But when I told him that she was thinking about getting back together with him he just said it's 'not gonna happen.' And I was so angry I said things I shouldn't have. I said I hated him and that he wouldn't see me unless it was with Mom. And then I hung up.” 

And Mindy realizes she’s crying now, which she'd hate because she’s an uglier crier, but it just feels so good to get off her chest that she makes an exception just this once. It feels so good she keeps going, listing everything else that's weighing down on her.

“Plus all my friends ever talk to me about nowadays are _you guys_ , and I can't even leave the house during the day without being hounded by the press, and my throat feels tighter and it gets harder to breath when I think about that night at school, and-, ” 

Mindy stops her tirade when she feels an arm wrap around her. She thinks this isn't what she'd need, especially after the party, but this arm is unlike the arm from earlier. This arm holds her softly. She feels safe in these arms. In fact, looking back at it, all she's ever felt in these arms were safe. Her tears are hot as they roll off her cheek and they make her cheeks feel sticky and itchy, but Herman presses her against his chest so she can bawl into him.

“Look...,” Herman starts. Shit, where is he going with this? “ ...your Mom fell in love with your Dad because he and I were at the top of our game back then. But when his scholarship fell through and he couldn’t do college football that’s when things fell apart.”

“So?” she questions, voice cracking.

“So…,” Herman echoes, trying his damndest not to take any missteps. “...I think maybe your Dad realized your Mom only ever liked him when he was at his best. And that he wants someone who’d like him even at his worst. Now I have no qualms about finding love through fame but that’s just cause I’m a piece of shit.” That earns a laugh from Mindy in-between her sniffling. “But your Dad isn’t and he wouldn’t want someone who only loves for his wins."

“But she doesn’t!” Mindy defends.

“Really?” Herman questions doubtfully

Mindy contemplates it for a moment then sighs resignedly, “No, you’re right.”

“Cheer up, I’m sure Hagan was thinking ‘bout you too when he made that decision," Herman suggests while rubbing her shoulder in comfort. "You have less than a year before you’re headed off into college and you don’t wanna spend it seeing your Mom and Dad in a forced marriage right?”

“Well…,” Mindy begins. “...no, no I guess not.”

“Exactly!” Herman assures her. “Now you gonna call your Dad tomorrow?”

Mindy groans and leans back into the bed. She grabs a pillow and smothers her face in it.

“I’ll try,” she answers, her voice muffled against the pillow.

“Good!” Herman comments. He stands up, relieved this was over and done with. He was never any good at this emotional shit, but luckily it involved Hagan so was able to pull through.

 _“Asshole already owes me two cases of beer and a foot massage. I’ll have to put this on his tab,”_ Herman muses to himself. But then he remembers how wasted she got and how she almost got hurt and how it was all under  _his_ watch.  _"On second thought, maybe I'll give him this one for free."_

“Wait, but what if I forget to call him?” Mindy asks, interrupting his train of thought. 

Oh yeah, she was shit-faced and looked like a mess. Herman wouldn’t be surprised if she forgot the whole night, not to mention a single conversation.

“Hmm...,” Herman hums. He looks around and sees a pad of blue sticky notes at her desk. “Here, how ‘bout I write a note? That way you’ll remember it in the morning!”

“Mmkay,” Mindy slurs. Herman isn’t sure she hears him but he writes it anyways.

“Just stick it on the pink binder.”

Herman sees a pink binder on top of her desk and sticks the note on there. Looking over his shoulder, Herman sees Mindy already unconscious. Or at the very least an inch away from it.

She’s sprawled messily on the mattress and, deciding that just leaving would be unceremonious, Herman remembers the cheesy Lifetime movies he’d fall asleep to while drunk and pulls a blanket over her.

Herman sighs and rubs his eyes, feeling more exhausted than he would in the aftermath of training. He wasn’t looking forward to being lectured on how late he returned; he was supposed to be back an hour after he left the base and it was _well_ past that. And if teens are anything like he thinks, those videos of him kicking that asshole into the fence would go viral, which won't help his case.

Before Herman leaves he takes a peek at Mindy to see her soundly asleep. Satisfied, he leaves, closing the door and rattling the house slightly as he rushes out in a hurry.

* * *

Mindy fully expects to be in a hospital room, hearing from the doctors that she had been asleep for over a decade because that's exactly how she feels when she wakes up the next morning. 

She sits up, which turns out to be a mistake when the hangover comes in full force and hits her like a truck.

Her lips are dry so she smacks her lips together, grimacing at the taste of unbrushed alcohol breath. Mindy gets up to brush her teeth but stops when she sees a note on her binder. 

Sprawled on a sticky note in messy handwriting was a note that read:

 

> _Don't forget to call Hagan!_
> 
> _\- Uncle Herman._
> 
> _P.S. cook pancakes they're the best for hangovers_
> 
>  

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this cause I rly liked the potential dynamic between Mindy and Herman. Uncle Herman needs to be a thing.
> 
> Also if it wasn't obvious enough, I dropped my old LT fic cause it was my first fanfic and there was zero planning. I do plan to write more one shots tho.


End file.
